So you’ve made an incredible product video. It’s everything you envisioned and more. Funny, but clever. Beautiful, but relatable. It tells your brand’s story and solidifies your identity. But one very important question remains: is it successful?
Just as in almost every marketing field, in the world of eCommerce video storytelling, metrics matter. After launching your product video it’s important to measure the success of your video content in order to see to it that your investment is getting the best results.
When it comes to measuring the success of your latest product video these are the top metrics that matter:
A video’s play rate is evidence of its appeal to an audience and is based on the percentage of people who press play divided by the total number of people who visit the page it lives on. The play rate can be more valuable than your play count number in that it’s the metric that is able to gauge whether or not a person is interested in finding out more information about your product. We have some great tips on optimizing your videos for increased play through rate here.
Even more important than play rate is engagement or watch time. It’s not enough to simply press play; users need to spend time with the video in order to retain your brand’s message. Also, keep track of where your visitors re-watch parts of your video. It’s a good indication for determining the value of the message conveyed at that point. We are typically seeing people watch 70% to 80% of a good product video before dropping off. Anything less than 40% and you should evaluate the quality of your content.
You can have a great video, but if your audience doesn’t know how to find it then it’s useless. To help make sure your video is seen, find out which key words are driving video views and use them in your tags and titles. Try A/B testing to determine which words work best.
A great product video will be shared often and how many times it’s shared is as important as where. Once you determine where, you can use this information to tailor your videos in order to place them in platforms where they’ll get the most traction in relation to the users visiting specific sites. For example, you might put longer product videos on your brand’s Facebook page and use shorter introductory videos on Twitter in order to drive users back to your site.
While your video may have a high play rate, what you’re looking for is conversion. Product videos always need to have a purpose from awareness and introduction, to signing up for more information to completing the sale, you need to offer your audience a direct call-to-action.
Want to learn more about which metrics count? Check out this comprehensive guide for video metrics over at Wistia. They’re also an excellent resource and friend of ours. Get in touch with the team at StoryCraft to see how we can improve your product video strategy to drive the most results.
Charlie Rall is the Co-Founder and Head Producer of StoryCraft
